Extraordinary Ordinary

A group of us watched the entire, extended version Lord of the Rings trilogy last Sunday. It is an adventure whose foundation is the fight for good over evil, for love, friendship, and what is right. I was left feeling a great need for adventure and meaning in my life. The everyday doesn't seem to cut it...

I've been typing up my creative writing journal/diary from 2006 trying to figure out what material I have for future stories and I have discovered all sorts of ideas, memories, songs I was listening to, and books I was reading. I wrote down several quotes from a book I was reading in the summer of 2006 called Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. Not so much the story but the language and concepts of the book have kept me running over it in my mind. I think of one sentence in particular,

“The wind that billowed her sheets announced to her the resurrection of the ordinary."

Is that not a beautiful line? We kill the ordinary on a daily basis. The drudgery of folding laundry and cleaning off muddy boots. There must be something more to the quotidian tasks we perform than to simply have the satisfaction of clean dishes to eat off of and a tub that doesn't turn black with mold. How do we make it more than ho-hum or how to we realize that it already is more than ordinary? We're told that all things should be done for the glory of God--even the mundane. Should the mundane not also be part of our noble calling somehow and shouldn't it be joyful even? We can't leave it off completely and hit the streets 'fighting the good fight'--perhaps it is part of the good fight to be fought. Thoughts in progress...